Love is a choice, not a feeling. Love is intentional. Love is purposeful. It is also a risk. Jesus risked as he was dying on the cross because He loved. He is love. He did it without knowing if anyone would choose Him. Love is allowing yourself to be vulnerable, to let walls come down. Love is scary when you put yourself out there in hopes of being chosen, that love will be the choice of the other person. Is love not worth the risk? Is love not worth the fight? What if Jesus allowed fear to stop Him? Jesus in the garden sweat drops of blood asking the Father if the cup could pass, but Jesus said, “not my will but yours.” Love won! He laid down His life for us. “No greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”

Women carry the heart of the Father. We are all daughters, sisters, mothers and/or wives. Our hearts are relational like our Father’s. The men carry a different part of the Fathers heart and it isn’t their role to fight for relationships, but it’s the woman’s. We were created to fight for our relationships. We learn early on that it’s natural to fight for our marriages and our children, but many of us never learn that friendship relationships are just as important to God to fight for. If we as women can begin to understand the very depths we were created with for relationships, our world would look completely different.

We are to be women of great wonder and awe. We as women have been told we’re complicated. Could that be because the world has not been able to describe women? We carry a depth within us that is vast. “Our friendships flow in the deep waters of the heart where God dwells and transformation takes place. It is here, in this holy place, woman can partner with God impacting and be impacted by another for lasting good. It is here that she can mother, nurture, encourage and call forth life,” says Stasi Eldredge in Captivating.

Eldredge goes on to say, “God endows Woman with certain qualities that are essential to relationship, qualities that speak of God. She is inviting.” Are we inviting as women? Are we drawing people to ourselves? When we draw people, we should be drawing them to the Father’s heart. However, the enemy has wounded us from the very beginning. God is restoring the woman heart, though right here and now!

Many people ask my sister and I “How does this kind of friendship/bond look?” God has blessed us with something truly miraculous that we don’t take for granted for a moment. It’s a friendship you can’t really manufacture. It’s one of those things that happens organically solely by the Spirit of God. And He has asked us to open up our own relationship for other’s to see what He has ordained for us to be. We always try to be as transparent as we can, sharing the good and the bad, so here is a peak into our daily lives as sisters. As we have already said in previous blogs, we are fully committed, willing to sacrifice, risk and lay our lives down for one another.

We learned early on that commitment wasn’t practiced when we were out having fun together or watching movies on the couch. Commitment came when we realized God put two completely different people together (Much like a marriage). Two people that communicate differently, talk and act differently, love differently and receive love differently. Two people with opposite fears and insecurities and even different ways of handling conflict. Commitment came when we instantly chose to love each other more than any attack that could come our way, no matter how long it took to get through! We have had times where we rubbed each other the wrong way and had to tell each other things we didn’t want to. But the difference with us when it comes to telling the other one something they may not want to hear about themselves, is it truly hurts the one having to tell as much as the one having to receive it. We carry each other’s hurts purposefully. Our love for one another is so supernatural, that we trust the other enough with the corrections they are giving to listen, talk openly and resolve the issue. We have definitely created a safe place for each other that most relationships lack. This kind of friendship has to stem from a place where both parties feel they can be open and safe with the other person. You feel safe to be yourself without apologies. It’s about loyalty. I know that whether I am right or wrong, my sister will cover me. I know she can see the ugliest places of my heart no one else sees, we can bleed all over each other and we remain committed to sticking it out together no matter what! You will not always agree with your best friend or sister, but when you KNOW that you know that you have that bond and that person has your back, the rest is easy! If you only knew the conflicts we have come through because we CHOSE to love through them and grow closer, rather than apart.

We are not able to do this on our own accord. We are still human and have tendencies to run away from each other and let our fears or laziness of resolution come before our friendship, but there is something we made a commitment to do together daily that covers us through it all, and that’s praying together. We actually began doing this because we reached a point where we had become comfortable in our friendship and weren’t praying together like we should have and boy did we see a difference. When we just skipped a day and then two and then several, we struggled with getting along; we were attacked in bad dreams, thoughts and were just off. Isn’t that just like God and us? When we aren’t praying and seeking Him, we can become disconnected too. So, from that moment on, we agreed that we have to be in prayer. We pray for each other, our families, women, our husbands, our church and protection of our friendship. We place a very high value on our friendship/sisterhood and always remain humble and aware that the enemy will try and divide.

We are still human and have our struggles and disagreements. We have times where we don’t see eye to eye. We have moments where we want to just walk away and not deal with conflict. But we never allow walking away from each other an option. And we’ve pushed through some hard times, none worth losing each other over. We work at listening to the others feelings and allowing them to feel validated and appreciated. We fight fair. We never throw the past or negative thoughts in each other’s faces. We are bold, though and do speak the truth to each other in love.  Because we trust each other, we are able to receive it, even when it’s hard. We cry it out sometimes when we don’t know what to do, and we always stick together until it’s worked out.

Something else my sister and I do is journal. We journal our feelings and seek God, asking Him to intervene. We share a journal apart from our own personal journals. We each have the journal for a few days or week or some time and we write to God, to each other and share our most raw emotions safely. We take turns writing all our highs and lows. We then pass it back to the other, read what our sister wrote and take it from there. We’ve been doing this for a few months now and committed to doing this forever. It also allows us to go even deeper and share certain things in our hearts that may be harder to say. We already love to look back on how far we have come and actually see that in our hardest moments, we always make it through, continuing to grow deeper with every victory! This is why it’s so hard for us to see why a majority of relationships today don’t work. It’s usually stemming from disagreements that snowball into something more unmanageable. One person doesn’t feel like working it out or has fallen out of love or whatever the situation may be. But we realized that love is a choice. When we don’t feel like working it out and we want to go back to the ways of the world and walk away, we actually hold onto God tighter and each other. There have been times where my sister and I are completely disagreeing and can get very frustrated with each other and want to literally get up and leave. (Remember, we do not communicate or receive things in the same way, but it’s our constant CHOICE to resolve, learn and grow.) We actually grab each other’s hand and finish our “fight” literally holding hands and refuse to let go until it is resolved.

My sister and I talk to each other every day, or at least text if there’s a day we can’t talk. We pray, talk about our lives, our families, our plans, etc. It’s not always deep. We can laugh at the dumbest things that no one else would probably get. We also committed to a set day once a week that is just our sister day and we don’t make other plans that day. We may go do something fun, run errands or just sit at home watching movies and talking, but it’s our day. We don’t do things the way the world does in friendships. This may not be how other friendships look, but it’s how ours looks. Some may think this is way too time consuming, way too complicated, way too much for a friendship. But my sister and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We see the blessings we reap from this sacrificial commitment. Blessings on our marriages, our families and the mission God has invited us to journey on together, and it is worth the judgment we may get. Knowing someone has your back, right or wrong, through life and death, you are empowered to change the world because if you fall, your sister is there to catch you! This is all new for us, too. We have never seen this displayed in our lives, but God gives us new revelation, new depth and new insight into the secrets and mysteries of His Word daily and the transformation He is calling for His women this generation to step up to. Our intimacy, passion and heart for one another is one that doesn’t come without a fierce fight! And my sister and I suited up and waged war for each other’s hearts, which is a story for another blog! This kind of friendship may come once in a lifetime if you’re lucky! Rarely do you see two powerful female-centric roles collaborating to do life this close, but like most, my sister and I were on our own individual journeys in life when God interrupted us and brought us together. We each possessed something the other needed to continue. We pray you will begin to see what God is doing in the hearts of women and our relationships because we believe we will play a vital role in what God is doing in the last days restoring sisterhood back.